Does Full-Day Kindergarten Reduce Parenting Daily Hassles?

Parenting daily hassles are viewed as the recurring demands associated with raising a young child (Crnic & Greenberg, 1990) and contribute to parental well-being and parenting relationships (Crnic, Gaze, & Hoffman, 2005). The goal of this study was to examine differences in the daily hassles reported by parents of half-day and full-day kindergarten students following the phased-in implementation of full-day kindergarten in Ontario. Based on results from a previous demonstration project of integrated kindergarten and childcare, it was hypothesized that parents of full-day kindergarten children would experience fewer daily hassles related to education and childcare. Four hundred and forty-nine parents participating in a longitudinal study tracking Ontario’s transition from half-day to full-day kindergarten were asked to complete a survey of their experiences with early childhood parenting daily hassles, as well as ademographic questionnaire as part of the larger study. We investigated whether parents of children enrolled in full-day programs experienced reductions in parenting daily hassles as compared to parents of children in half-day programs. Overall, parents of children enrolled in full-day kindergarten reported similar levels of daily hassles to parents of children in half-day programs. Additional analyses of demographic factors indicated that full-day kindergarten was related to lower levels of daily hassles for parents who worked full-time. Policy implications regarding integrated full-day kindergarten and childcare are discussed

Ask the experts: what skills do young children need to be ready for school?

Video series produced by the Education Commons, OISE/UTChildren need to develop a whole range of skills—physical, cognitive, emotional, and social—to be ready for school. Parents don’t need high-tech gadgets to help, but they do need to be attentive to their child’s development in all these areas, and use specific strategies to foster school readiness

Parent participation in children' school readiness: The effects of parental self-efficacy, cultural diversity and teacher strategies

Many early intervention programs have been shaped by the notion that children's development should be studied in the contexts of family and community. Reciprocal parent-child interaction is a key feature of child development in those contexts. Parent involvement, parental self-efficacy and parenting style are factors that influence parent-child interactions and contribute to early development, the transition to school, and future child outcomes. This study examined parent factors and teacher strategies to foster parent involvement and efficacy in a unique Canadian preschool intervention program in the Greater Toronto area. ESL (n = 64) and English-speaking (n = 59) parent groups, who participated in school-based Parenting and Readiness Center programs with their 4-year olds, were compared on goals for participation, parenting style, feelings of self-efficacy as a result of program participation and on their perceptions of teachers as model. Overall findings suggest that parents who perceive themselves as more effective are more involved in their children's education at the pre-school level. Teacher strategies are described as a key feature in facilitating parent involvement and parental self-efficacy

Schools as Integrated Service Hubs for Young Children and Families: Policy Implications of the Toronto First Duty Project

Abstract In many parts of the world early childhood services are disconnected in ways that reduce their effectiveness in supporting family life, healthy child development, and the transition to school. Furthermore, access to these services is often limited, particularly for marginalized families. There is increasing policy interest around the world in building early childhood service systems that are universal and integrated, as a way of strengthening the effectiveness and equity of early childhood services. Although there is a growing push to unify child care and education in a universal system, both in Canada and elsewhere, a fully integrated system would bring together additional services for family support, health and community programs. The Toronto First Duty demonstration project was designed to test the feasibility and effects of a universal model for integrating child care, kindergarten, family support and other services in school-based community hubs. The intent of the project partners — a charitable foundation, municipal government, and school board- was to mobilize knowledge to improve early childhood programs and policy at both the local and provincial levels. A university-based research team has worked over the last decade to evaluate the implementation process and outcomes of the project, and has contributed to the knowledge mobilization for practice and policy change. The research found positive evidence on the feasibility of implementing the model, as well as evidence about the processes that work through program and family pathways to enhance child development and parenting. Findings from the project have helped to move provincial policy in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada. Although fixed models may not apply to new contexts, some of the evidence-informed design principles from this project converge with findings from other jurisdictions and have broad implications for policies promoting universal, integrated service systems for early childhood

The Impact of Full-Day Kindergarten on Learning Outcomes and Self-Regulation Among Kindergarten Children at Risk for Placement in Special Education

Two-year, play-based, full-day kindergarten (FDK) has been shown to have long-term academic and self-regulation benefits for young children. This article addresses the question of whether FDK has particular benefits for children who may be at risk for placement in special education. Participants included 592 kindergarten children in their second year of kindergarten, with an average age of 5 years, 9 months. Parent reports indicated that 56% of the children spoke a language other than English at home. The research design exploited a natural experiment that occurred due to the phasing-in of FDK, creating two groups of children who attended either FDK or half-day kindergarten (HDK). Kindergarten children’s outcomes in vocabulary, reading, writing, mathematics, and self-regulation were used to create two achievement groups based on data cut-points: below average and average to above average. Following a series of binary logistic regression analyses, results showed that HDK children were significantly more likely than FDK children to be in the below average group in the areas of reading, vocabulary, and self- regulation. In fact, results for self-regulation showed that HDK children were three times more likely to fall into the below average group. These results are consistent with our larger study on the longitudinal impact of FDK to Grade 3. The article discusses the importance of play-based learning in fostering self-regulation and providing opportunities for small- group learning in the FDK program. For children who struggle academically, full-day learning through play with the guidance of an educator team may present additional benefits

Action, Consciousness and Theory of Mind: Children’s Ability to Coordinate Story Characters’ Actions and Thoughts

This study reports on an analysis of the relation between kindergarten children’s developing theory of mind and their understanding of characters’ actions and consciousness in story narrative, based on Bruner’s (1986) notion of the dual landscapes of action and consciousness. Wordless picture books were used to model these two aspects of narrative through the direct portrayal of action and thought by way of thought bubbles and adults’ explicit metacognitive talk. Children were asked to retell stories following both an experimenter’s and the teacher’s initial storytelling. Children’s ability to coordinate story characters’ thoughts, beliefs and intentions (consciousness) was measured by the frequency of reference to both the character’s action or presence and the content of his/her thought bubbles in the stories. Results of the analyses revealed relations among children’s age, language ability, non-verbal intelligence, theory of mind development, and their ability to coordinate consciousness and action in the stories. Younger children who have less developed theory of mind more often retold just the action in the real world without reference to thought, or else described the scene depicted within the thought bubble without reference to the character who held the thought. Implications for education, such as teaching children to talk about the mind, are discussed

Young Children’s Knowledge-Building and Literacy Development through Knowledge Forum®

This study examined how the use of Knowledge Forum (KF)®, a networked, internet-based learning environment, was related to the literacy development of children in a 4-year old classroom in a laboratory school affiliated with OISE/University of Toronto. //Junior K is not a common term in US. If you use “Kindergarten” only, it would cause confusion. I would suggest that you get rid of any reference to “kindergarten.”//. Over the course of the year, the children participated in a longitudinal photo journal project. With adult support, children posted their photo journals and ideas to Knowledge Forum in the form of electronic “notes,” which allowed children to view each other’s work and to build on ideas by posting their responses and comments. Results showed that children were motivated to read and to respond to the notes of their peers using invented spelling. Gender differences were found in the number and type of notes posted. Implications of the study were discussed regarding the motivation for literacy among boys and girls and the benefits for teachers and children in having electronic archives of literacy development in a comparison to a non-KF® class

Promising Effects of an Intervention: Young Children’s Literacy Gains and Changes in Their Home Literacy Activities from a Bilingual Family Literacy Program in Canada

The goal of this paper was to examine promising effects of a bilingual family literacy program: to track the changes of families’ literacy activities through a bilingual family literacy intervention, and to examine the children literacy gains in both Chinese and English across socioeconomic sub-groups. The intervention was an eight-week, two hours per week, literacy program in three Chinese communities in Toronto. Parents, with their children, participated in the program. The extremely high attendance rate provided evidence that families enjoyed the family literacy intervention and felt that the sessions were worthwhile. For their families’ literacy activities, the three sites followed the same trend: reaching the peak of activity at week four, slightly dropping down at weeks five and six, and then increasing to a second peak at week seven or week eight. Results also showed that across the three groups, children of mothers with lower education levels made fewer gains in their English expressive vocabularies and their Chinese expressive vocabularies, than children whose mothers had a higher level of education

The Early Development Instrument as an evaluation and improvement tool for school-based, integrated services for young children and parents: The Toronto First Duty Project

Integrated services for young children and families are part of the new policy landscape in early childhood, but there is limited evidence on the effectiveness of these programs and how they develop on the ground. This study examined the use of the Early Development Instrument (EDI) as both a summative program evaluation tool and as a formative program improvement tool supporting practitioners in Toronto First Duty, an integrated services demonstration project that combined kindergarten, child care and parenting supports in public schools. Pre-post comparisons at community demonstration sites and comparisons with matched community sites using the EDI suggested that the demonstration program was associated with modest improvements in emotional and social domains of children’s development. Mixed methods and multiple measures were used to contextualize summative findings in case studies across demonstration sites. The case studies explored how integration was implemented at different sites and how dimensions of enacted integration might contribute to positive outcomes for children and families. A case study of one site showed how an integrated staff team used EDI school-level profiles, along with formative feedback on program quality, to target and improve programming. Over the course of implementation, the integrated program environment quality ratings and EDI scores improved in relevant areas assessing quality of interaction and social-emotional development. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of the EDI in program evaluation and in improvement of practice. The potential value of integrated early childhood services and the challenges of evaluating complex community initiatives is also discussed